In Sudan, night raids and arbitrary arrests target putsch opponents

In front of the women’s prison of Omdurman, twin city of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, a small crowd demanding the release of political prisoners formed on the sidelines of a new day of mobilization against military power. This Sunday, February 20, leaning on her crutches, Amira Osman gives voice. Fifteen days earlier, the representative of the initiative “No to the oppression of women”, was still on the other side of the high brick walls surmounted by barbed wire.

On Saturday, January 22, she was in her bathroom when twenty hooded men armed with Kalashnikovs burst into her home and took her manu militari into a convoy of unregistered pick-ups. “It looked like a raid on a terrorist cell. Nothing justified such a deployment. I am disabled, I couldn’t go far”she is indignant, recalling that she has difficulty moving following a domestic accident.

Without an arrest warrant, the squad presents itself as the narcotics squad. Amira Osman does not believe it for a second. When he was released on February 6, his doubts were confirmed. She was arrested by the General Intelligence Services (GIS), formerly NISS – the powerful secret police of Omar Al-Bashir dissolved after his fall –, which she already dealt with in 2012. “General Burhane has resurrected old demons. In December, he issued a decree giving expanded powers to the security forces, granting them complete immunity”she complains.

In twenty years of activism for women’s rights and within the Communist Party, Amira Osman no longer counts the arrests by the police for wearing trousers or refusing to wear the hijab under the previous regime which had imposed discriminatory laws on order and public morals, abolished in 2019.

“An Outlaw State”

“We had some hope [avec la transition politique], but the putsch is a step back. They target women because they have played an important role on the streets for three years. They seek to terrorize families into preventing their daughters from participating in protests. But that only strengthens our resolve.”she says.

Amira Osman considers herself lucky. A figure in the fight for human rights, she was freed thanks to the mobilization of numerous Sudanese and international organizations. According to the collective of emergency lawyers, which tries to follow and list the arrests of activists, more than 400 political prisoners are now detained across the country.

In Khartoum, lawyers were able to confirm the presence of at least a hundred activists, politicians or simple demonstrators at Soba prison, in the south-east of the city. The security services mainly target the members of the resistance committees, spearheads of the protest against the putsch.

“Today we are faced with an outlaw state. These arrests are illegal, contrary to Sudanese and international law. No procedure is followed”underlines the lawyer Abdelsalam Saboon, questioning the“permanent state of emergency” decreed on October 25, 2021.

Confessions extracted under torture

According to the jurist, the charges against detainees are often exaggerated, even falsified. Amira Osman, for example, is under investigation for possession of weapons and ammunition because five small caliber bullets were found in one of her drawers. “Memories that they hold as overwhelming evidence”defends the one who was national shooting champion in the past.

Another case recently hit the headlines, that of Mohammed Adam, alias “Tupac”, 17, incarcerated in Kober prison. Accused by authorities of having stabbed a police brigadier during a demonstration on January 13, the young man was arrested in hospital where he was being treated for gunshot wounds to the leg. He faces the death penalty.

His family, who were finally able to visit him, claim that the security forces extracted a confession from him under torture. Isolated in a cell, his state of health deteriorated. “He has a broken leg and on the other they hammered four nails”, panics his sister Gwabel Adam. The young man is said to have started a hunger strike, like a hundred other prisoners detained in Soba, to denounce their conditions of detention.

Among them are several members of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), the coalition of political parties that shared power with the military since the fall of Omar Al-Bashir before being ousted by General Abdel Fattah Al – Bourhane. On February 9, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Khalid Omer, a figurehead of the Sudanese Congress party, was arrested in the middle of a political meeting. In the days that followed, Mohammed Al-Faki, former member of the Sovereignty Council, Wajdi Saleh, of the Baath party, Othman Al-Tayeb and Taha Osman Ishaq were in turn placed under lock and key.

A “cover-up operation”

All had already been arrested at the time of the coup, then released when Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok temporarily returned to his post following the signing of a controversial agreement with the junta. Today, they are implicated for their activities related to the committee for the dismantling of the regime of Omar Al-Bashir.

Before the coup, this body had conducted multiple investigations into cases of corruption and embezzlement involving members of the former regime, leading to the freezing of their bank accounts and the seizure of many ill-gotten gains.

Since October 25, 2021, General Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane has rehabilitated many of the supporters of the fallen regime. Among them, the prosecutor general just appointed by the junta, Al-Khalifa Ahmad, who served under Omar Al-Bashir and claims to have no information concerning these arbitrary arrests.

After several complaints left pending, members of the collectives of lawyers met Monday, February 21 the UN envoy for human rights, Adama Dieng, who begins until Thursday his first visit to Khartoum since the putsch. On the same day, the authorities released some 40 detainees from Soba prison, who had been incarcerated for several weeks without any charges being brought against them.

The collective of emergency lawyers welcomes this ” first step “, while denouncing “cover-up operation which aims to make the UN envoy believe that the regime’s jails are empty”. “The authorities under pressure want to polish their image”, adds lawyer Nafissa Hajar, who recalls that, while all eyes are on Khartoum, dozens of detainees are still languishing in jails in the north of the country or Darfur. Since the beginning of the protest movement against the putsch, 82 demonstrators have been killed.